Monthly Archives: August 2013

1. This weekend is all the time I’ll have to throw together my steampunk Amelia Earhart costume. Good thing I have some accessories coming together–with some help from my dad, who made the big prop at top (!) and contributed an old pilot’s wings pin :

(Yes, steampunk pictures require ALL the vintage photo filters.)

2. This quote has been on my mind lately (see project above):

I calculated the odds of this succeeding vs the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid, and …I went ahead anyway.

The New York Times reports that there might be more books from my favorite author, Jerome David “J.D.” Salinger:

…a forthcoming documentary and related book, both titled “Salinger,” include detailed assertions that Mr. Salinger instructed his estate to publish at least five additional books–some of them entirely new, some extending past work–in a sequence that he intended to begin as early as 2015.

One collection, to be called “The Family Glass,” would add five new stories to an assembly of previously published stories about the fictional Glass family, which figured in Mr. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” and elsewhere […] The new works are [also] said to include a story-filled “manual” of the Vedanta religious philosophy.

When he died, I wondered if more stories would be coming out, since he was rumored to have kept writing. More Salinger would be like Christmas morning-times-a-thousand, so I hope it’s true.

In addition to Steampunk-a-thon Costume Madness, this weekend will also have a party in it. I never had one to celebrate the deck’s completion, so it was “now or never” for Labor Day Weekend and the end of summer (SIGH). It makes for a busy week, but I keep saying that the theme of 2013 is “increase, not loss”: more parties, more projects, more friends, more socializing, more paper lanterns:

Some backstory first: I am anti-costume, due to many, many factors (including but not limited to: feeling ridiculous very easily, being dumped on Halloween in college, never liking makeup, wanting to put my time and energy into sewing something I can wear more than once, etc. etc.).

Yesterday I went from, “Eh, I can help you guys with your costumes” to “I am going to own an Amelia Earhart-inspired steampunk aviatrix getup! that I will make in a weekend!” in about four hours. I’m still not sure what happened.

I’m starting with this pattern (view A) in faux leather and adding boots and leggings and a lot of belts. (As far as I can tell, you can throw straps on anything and call it steampunk.) There will of course be an aviator hat, thanks to my friend who is a costume guru and (thankfully) helping me art direct, and there may or may not be opera gloves. A loose inspiration is Amelia #8 below:
With a little bit of this thrown in, too:

This all came on so suddenly, I’m not even sure who I am any more. Apparently it’s someone who’s making a cosplay outfit for Comic Con. Will I finish in time? Will I regret wrangling 4 yards of pleather? Will I look cool, or will I look like Tron Guy? Tune in next week for the thrilling conclusion!

Those are the obvious ones, and the valuable ones, and the ones I enjoy the benefit of every day. But here’s something else: My dad is a delightful person.

He can pull out an oldsong or pop culture reference and make a joke (that may or may not involve a pun) for any situation. He watched Animaniacs with me every day after school and has the score of The Music Man memorized . He calls my pergola “Timberhenge” and money “fun tickets.” He took a class to learn how to make balloon animals for my nephew Skyler. He is shy and funny and self-effacing and so, so smart and he is always willing to help his family or make Skyler smile. Delightful: “Causing delight; charming.”

It’s a little blurry, but I think Skyler is expressing all our feelings here:

Happy birthday, Dad!

(Yes, that is a birthday pie at the top. Dad and I request birthday pies instead of cakes.)

I’m sure you’re wondering how I’m liking the Lemony Snicket books, right? I can only say they’re like Sesame Street–obviously for younger kids, but smart and educational and with humor for the adults in the audience thrown in. For example:

There is a snake in this room so deadly that your heart would stop before you even knew he’d bitten you. There is a snake who can open her mouth so wide she could swallow all of us, together, in one gulp. There is a pair of snakes who have learned to drive a car so recklessly that they would run you over in the street and never stop to apologize.

And then there’s this:

He taught them…to never, under any circumstances, let the Virginian Wolfsnake near a typewriter.

Both of these are from book 2 of the series, The Reptile Room, so I’ve made it that far. I’m not sure I’ll keep reading, though–they do go fast but there are other things to read.

The cicada’s dry monotony breaks
over me. The days are bright
and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today
for an hour, with my whole
body, the way babies cry?

*

A white, indifferent morning sky,
and a crow, hectoring from its nest
high in the hemlock, a nest as big
as a laundry basket … In my childhood
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.

The damp dirt road gave off
this same complex organic scent.

I had the new books—words, numbers,
and operations with numbers I did not
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.

Spruce, inadequate, and alien
I stood at the side of the road.
It was the only life I had.